I am a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston where I founded and direct the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and head the graduate program in space architecture. My background deals extensively with research, planning and design of habitats, structures and other support systems for applications in space and extreme environments on Earth. I have recently written a new book titled "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax". It can be previewed and ordered at www.climateofcorruption.com. Additional information about my book and views can be found on my YouTube address: http://www.youtube.com/climateofcorruption.

Nobel Physics laureate Ivar Giaever has called global warming (now “climate change”) a “new religion”. Its temple is built on grounds of faith rather than scientific foundations.

Author Michael Crichton articulated the essence of this creed in a 2003 speech whereby “There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with Nature; there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result from eating from the tree of knowledge; and as a result of our actions, there is a judgment day coming for all of us. We are energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment, just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs imbibe.”

It seems the deepest, hottest pit of fossil-fueled climate change hell is reserved for crisis “deniers”. These are the heretics who have either turned their backs on true villainy of human climate sin, or worse, are its evil agents.

An article written by Forbes contributor Steve Zwick last month charges the latter. Moreover, he called for retribution, venting: “We know who the active denialists are–not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices. They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

After his article ignited a firestorm of inflamed reader responses, Steve has subsequently posted a second one clarifying that it wasn’t really his wish to incite burning of skeptical households. And it’s unlikely that most ever saw that as his literal intent. I certainly understand that opinion columns, very much including mine, should often be expected to present controversial viewpoints that provoke reflection and commentary. No doubt, he clearly accomplished that.

Environmental blog author Mark Lynas has expressed a similarly harsh moral view of climate crisis skeptics: “I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who are partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial-except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don’t will one day have to answer for their crimes.”

The horrifically offensive Holocaust/climate denier conflation has come to be indelibly inculcated into the attack lexicon through repeated references. For example, when television commentator Scott Pelly was asked in a March 23, 2006 CBS PublicEye blog post why he didn’t interview anyone who didn’t agree that global warming is a threat, he compared scientists who are skeptical about human-caused catastrophic climate change to Holocaust deniers: “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”

David Roberts, a regular contributor to Grist, a prominent environmental news and commentary blog site, carried the denier Holocaust theme even farther. Referring to the “denial industry”, he stated that we should have “war crime trials for these bastards—some sort of Nuremberg.”

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman, Rajendra Pachuri, even went beyond the Holocaust to compare the views of global warming crisis skeptics with those of Hitler himself. Referring to the well-known skeptic Bjorn Lombord, Pachuri stated, “What is the difference between Lomborg’s views on humans and Hitler’s? You cannot treat people like cattle.”

Another broadly applied denigration strategy is to accuse skeptical scientists and organizations of having nefarious financial ties to “evil” special interest sponsors, most particularly, being in the pockets of Big Oil companies. An example is Al Gore’s claim in a Rolling Stones article last year that: “Polluters and Ideologues are financing pseudoscientists whose job it is to manufacture doubt about what is true and false [and] ….spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media.”

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Larry, Sounds like you don’t think global warming exists. Not sure where you lived all your life but it appears you should be old enough to remember the climate 40 years ago. It was significantly different. I wish it were not true but unfortunately it is.

As for Ivan just because he’s a nobel prize winner does not make him an expert or even intellectually capable of knowing about global warming. He was in physicals not global climatology.

Your old enough to not have to live through the consequences of your choices. Its not the same for my children. As a species we are young, foolish and ignorant. Our survival one the next couple hundred years is in question. Global warming is a fact with a lot of very good science behind it. Your argument about the scientist doing it are being alarmist for the downstream funding is ridiculous. Really they all just want the next funding round. Please.

We have a choice as a species to grow up. Wonder how its going to work out.

Larry, Sounds like you don’t think global warming exists. Not sure where you lived all your life but it appears you should be old enough to remember the climate 40 years ago. It was significantly different. I wish it were not true but unfortunately it is.

As for Ivan just because he’s a nobel prize winner does not make him an expert or even intellectually capable of knowing about global warming. He was in physicals not global climatology.

Your old enough to not have to live through the consequences of your choices. Its not the same for my children. As a species we are young, foolish and ignorant. Our survival over the next couple hundred years is in question. Global warming is a fact with a lot of very good science behind it. Your argument about the scientist doing it are being alarmist for the downstream funding is ridiculous. Really they all just want the next funding round. Please.

We have a choice as a species to grow up. Wonder how its going to work out.

I agree that drawing comparisons to the Holocaust is terribly insensitive, counterproductive and ill-advised. That should not, however, stop us from pointing out the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by those that are perfectly willing to sell out our long range survival on their short term profit margin. These people employ the most competent scientists, statisticians, econometricians and actuaries available and thus are perfectly cognizant of the solid scientific evidence behind anthropogenic global warming. Nevertheless, they knowingly disseminate blatant lies to delay action as long as possible. Those that consciously create these campaigns of misdirection are truly evil people, and I would fully support their prosecution and imprisonment at the appropriate time.

Only slightly less culpable are those that are guilty of believing those lies because of political loyalty and suboptimal cognitive skills. Jail may be too harsh for them, but conversely the shame they will bear and the embarrassment of their children and grandchildren hardly seems adequate punishment.

I think you do not remember how the scientific method works. A scientific theory can NEVER be proven. It can only be disproven and replaced by a better model should one come along. It is actually the job of scientists to work to build the best model and to simultaneously work to find the holes in models so that we can constantly improve on our scientific knowledge.